Christian law school standing strong after win at Nova Scotia Court of Appeals

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – The Nova Scotia Court of Appeals Tuesday upheld a trial court’s decision which found that the province’s Barristers’ Society doesn’t have the authority to deny accreditation to Trinity Western University’s law school because of its biblical beliefs on appropriate sexual behavior. The decision comes after a ruling from an appeals court in Ontario in June found the opposite, creating a split decision that may increase the odds that the case is destined for the Supreme Court of Canada.

TWU filed a lawsuit in October 2014 against NSBS after it refused to recognize TWU graduates as lawyers unless the school changed its policy on sexual activity and marital fidelity. TWU requires its students, faculty, and staff to refrain from having premarital sex or engaging in sex outside of a marriage relationship between one man and one woman.

“Christian universities and schools should be free to operate according to the very faith they teach and believe,” said Gerald Chipeur, Q.C., of the Canadian firm Miller Thompson, LLP, and one of more than 3,000 private attorneys allied with Alliance Defending Freedom. “The court accurately affirmed that the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society has improperly denied accreditation by attempting to regulate outside of its jurisdiction—and did so simply because the law school and its students adhere to their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

“Nothing in the Legal Profession Act authorizes the Society to issue an independent ruling that someone has violated Nova Scotia’s Human Rights Act. Nor does the Human Rights Act…, as amended, contemplate the Society’s intervention…,” the Nova Scotia Court of Appeals wrote in its decision in The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society v. Trinity Western University. “It is inconceivable that the Legislature, without expressing a supportive word in either the Legal Profession Act or the Human Rights Act, intended that the Society’s Council could assert for itself an autonomous jurisdiction concurrent with that of a human rights board of inquiry.”

Alliance Defending Freedom has provided support to the work of a team of allied attorneys representing multiple groups that filed briefs and presented oral argument in support of TWU.

“As the court recognized, the Barristers’ Society clearly overstepped its bounds,” explained ADF Senior Counsel Brett Harvey. “The society’s job is to accredit based on competency, not on their collective distaste for Christian beliefs about human sexuality. No Canadian law gives an accreditation body the power to discriminate on that basis.”

Pronunciation guide: Chipeur (CHIP’-yur)

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

RELATED RESOURCES

ABOUT Brett Harvey

Brett Harvey serves as senior counsel and vice president of allied legal affairs with Alliance Defending Freedom. Harvey has assisted state and local governments on issues involving public invocations and religious expression, and he has successfully represented clients in defense of their First Amendment freedoms and the right to life. He earned his J.D. from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University in Georgia in 1995. He is admitted to the bar in the states of Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and Arizona. Harvey has also been admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th Circuits; and the U.S. District Court in Colorado. He joined Alliance Defending Freedom in 2000 and has been practicing law since 1995.